Scottish Ballet presses on with changes BY JAMES DOHERTY in The Scotsman

SCOTTISH Ballet is forging ahead with controversial plans to reposition itself as a contemporary rather than traditional company with the approval of a new draft business plan. The three-year plan will now be submitted to the Scottish Arts Council for approval and funding, despite fierce opposition to the proposals from the company's dancers and leading figures within the Scottish dance establishment. And, last night, outgoing artistic director, Robert North, told The Scotsman he was risking his job by speaking out against the proposals and the ballet's management. He said: "What I'm saying here may get me fired, but I have no choice but to say it." Mr North said he had not been told of the board's decision to approve the business plan.

<B>Shift of emphasis</B> <BR>Letter in The Scotsman<P><BR>The Scottish Arts Council is aiding and abetting what are claimed to be "minor shifts of emphasis" in Scottish Ballet, which will take it away from classical ballet towards contemporary dance. Meanwhile, the ballet-going public are expected to stand meekly by while our national classical ballet company is disassembled! <P><A HREF="http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=395942002&rware=KUSBKQGKSFKV&CQ_CUR_DOCUMENT=1" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Some not good press for Scottish Ballet.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>A FORMER member of Scottish Ballet is facing up to 20 years in jail for an alleged drunken air-rage incident aboard a flight from London to Boston.<P>Rupert Turner, 32, is charged with assaulting and interfering with a flight crew, amid claims he attacked his fiancée, passengers and staff on the United Airlines flight.<BR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=476402002&rware=QUWCPSZEQXLV&CQ_CUR_DOCUMENT=1" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

To be honest we ( i live in Scotland ) don't need another contemporary dance company , we have enough..there is no other" classical" company up here , so i wish that they would stay the way they are and not change.

<B>Opera and ballet bid for extra £2.5m</B><BR>Flagship arts companies pledge to spend cash on new productions rather than covering deficits. By Juliette Garside in The Sunday Herald.<BR> <P>Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet are bidding for a combined grant increase of more than £2.5 million a year so they can put on more new productions and tour shows to smaller venues around the country.<BR>The companies declined to comment on specific figures, but Scottish Opera is understood to have asked for an extra £1.5m a year while Scottish Ballet needs £1m more from next April. The companies' management is also hoping to secure £150,000 a year in public subsidy for the loss-making Theatre Royal, the Glasgow auditorium bought by Scottish Opera in 1975. <P>In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Chris Barron, chief executive of the combined opera and ballet companies, said they were looking to boost their activities, but that they would not be spending money they did not have.<P><A HREF="http://www.sundayherald.com/24715" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><p>[This message has been edited by Stuart Sweeney (edited May 20, 2002).]

<B>Calling A Brand New Tune</B><BR>Scotland's opera and ballet boss reveals his highly ambitious plan to save the arts to Juliette Garside in The Sunday Herald<BR> <P>AS dusk falls, the trams and cars swoop to a halt and begin discharging their smartly dressed passengers outside Strathclyde Opera House. The buzz is palpable. After a decade of planning and building -- and, naturally, arguing over costs -- Scotland finally has a new home for the arts.<P>Nobody is more excited than its architect, Zaha Hadid, whose designs for a Welsh national opera building were abandoned some 20 years before. She is there among the crowds on the sweeping terrace overlooking the Clyde, surveying the small pleasure craft swaying at their moorings in the Yorkhill Basin and the ranks of new apartment buildings rising from the neighbouring quays.<P>The bell rings, and the excited audience begins to make its way into the auditorium, where the orchestra is tuning up for Das Rheingold. To celebrate the opening of its new home, Scottish Opera is staging a revival of its acclaimed 2003 Wagner Ring Cycle.<P><A HREF="http://www.sundayherald.com/24687" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Article in The Independent.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Two words provoked the furore: "contemporary dance". In other contexts, they are harmlessly commonplace, but when, last August, Scottish Ballet linked them to the company's future orientation, all hell broke loose. Scotland finally acquired its own arts soap, some time after the Royal Opera House's weekly crises entertained the nation. Yards of newspaper print, petitions, reports, statistics and cries of, "Resign!" erupted, followed by a Scottish parliamentary inquiry.<P><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/features/story.jsp?story=299432" TARGET=_blank> <B> MORE </B> </A>

PHIL MILLER - The Herald, August 5th, 2002:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>New chief of Scottish Ballet says it is time to expand</B><P>ASHLEY Page, the new artistic director of Scottish Ballet, has declared his desire to expand the size of the troubled national company.<P>In his first interview since landing the leading post at Scotland's national dance company, he also said there will be a place for both classical ballet styles and more modern work while he is at the helm.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><B>more...</B><P>

WITHIN the next few days, Scottish Ballet's crowd-pleasing Christmas show, The Snowman, will melt away. After a brief break, the company will re-assemble behind the closed doors of 261 (as the company's Glasgow base in West Princes Street is generally referred to) and the business of rebuilding and relaunching Scottish Ballet will begin in earnest.

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